February 23, 2012

The Stars and Their Stories

The last day of our week is sort of a catch up day or a fun day. It is the time when we do map drills for Egypt and when we read about a mathematician instead of doing math problems from our book. It is also the day that we have been reading about Galileo and learning more about the stars. First we read about Galileo using these books:

Now we are reading through a public domain book called The Stars and Their Stories. It is full of poems that could be used for copy work, and the stories from Greece about how the stars got their names for narration. I am so excited about the stories for they introduce our study of Greece and Rome next year so beautifully. To be able to have a hands-on element in the lesson I created an interactve pocket that goes with a set of notebook pages that follows along with each chapter. Each page allows space to write a short something about the story and the hands-on activity gives the boys a chance to map out the stars with a push pin and hold it up to the light to see the star patterns of each constellation. The velum pocket holds it all together on one page.

The page.

The punching out.

The looking.

After they have punched out the holes then we trace the line between the stars to reveal the pattern more clearly. Then label it and put it in the pocket.